An identity grounded in God would mean that when we think of who we are, the first thing that would come to mind is our status as someone who is deeply loved by God. ~ David Benner, “The Gift of Being Yourself”
To till: to prepare and cultivate (land) for crops.
I like that.
I like using the word “till” as a word-picture for us preparing the ground of our hearts and lives to receive the seed God wants to plant in us—in our lives.
Do you need to prepare your heart? Has it hardened in any way? Lost it’s ability to produce good fruit, crops, blooms?
Do you need to break up the “fallow ground”?
The original meaning of fallow ground meant un-cultivated, which means un-plowed (not broken up), un-prepared.
We need to prepare our hearts for supernatural seeds.
Seeds of love.
Seeds God wants to plant deeply in our hearts that will transform us.
Forever.
His Love is glorious, dazzling, breathtakingly resplendent.
It is incomparable · unrivaled · unequaled · unparalleled · matchless · peerless · second to none · magnificent with all that is good and pure and desirable.
There just aren’t enough superlatives to describe Him.
I imagine in heaven that the Love we experience will bring us to our knees in worship–with songs of praise. There won’t be anything there to taint the purity and full force of that Love.
Once we get even a glimpse, a taste, a hint of His Love on this imperfect earth, there’s no going back.
We want more.
Nothing in this life compares.
He is well worth pursuing.
And the fact is, He is pursuing us so we don’t have to fear unrequited love.
He’s “all in.” And so we can be too.
So, the love circle starts with His love for us:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
He gave. He gave His perfect, beautiful, holy Son.
And then there is this stunning, take-your-breath-away declaration by this perfect one, Jesus, in a prayer to His (our) Father:
May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. John 17:23
We could do an entire study, and a long contemplative time, based on just that scripture!
Our Father-God loves us as much as He loves the perfect, holy One—Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God!
It’s right there in the Bible!
I still reel whenever I read it.
The Lord is beckoning you to step into the mysteries of His love. A love that cannot be compared to any love you have ever known on this earth. Along the way, you will be blessed and broken, cherished and challenged. Yet in the end, you will be consumed with Him and discover your true identity. “The Divine Romance: 365 Days Meditating on the Song of Songs”
God reaches out to us with open arms, wanting us to experience His Love in the deepest places of our being—where all the fears, hurts, questions and dreams reside.
When we allow His Love to come in, we will never be the same.
We really will find ourselves in Him—in the glorious safety and security of His Love that never gives up on us, never fails, is always there.
The Love that (Who) believes in us—believes we are a divine masterpiece!
Love is extended to us and Love asks for love to be given. Jesus taught us this in the greatest commandment.
Jesus replied:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
The giving is easy and natural because as He fills us up we simply overflow.
So…it starts with…
His Love for us.
Then…
Our love back to Him.
Love for ourselves.
Love for others.
A circle of love.
And those seeds.
Seeds of purpose.
All so we can bloom.
There it is again.
That God-garden of people-blooms.
When we feel secure in His love, we will be much more open to freely pursue and express the dreams and gifts He has put in us. Like a child, secure in the knowledge of their parents and family’s love, we can share and laugh and create with no inhibitions.
Freely we have received and freely we pour out from our overflow.
Love always gives more than enough.
His Love opens your heart to share with others.
Neither knowing God nor knowing self can progress very far unless it begins with a knowledge of how deeply we are loved by God. ~ David Benner, “The Gift of Being Yourself”
A child brought up in a healthy family environment knows they will be loved and encouraged—even when they make mistakes or look silly. They dance and sing and draw and play and dream big dreams without caring what other people might think.
And when they fall, they laugh and get right back up.
Or if they fall and cry, they are cradled in their mother’s or father’s arms. So it is for us with our God.
He loves us just like that.
But sometimes—perhaps even often—we have a very difficult time believing that God loves us.
It could be because of unlovable (sinful) things we have done, and we feel ashamed and sure that God couldn’t possibly love us.
Or it could be because our earthly parents did anything but model the God-kind of love toward us so we have a poor representation of what love really is.
Or it could be that we feel very (very) disappointed in God when it comes to answers (or lack thereof) to our prayers—many of them serious and desperate.
So I think many people give up on love—or at the least, the hope of a loving God.
What I believe we all need isn’t a head knowledge of love but a heart knowledge of it.
A revelation.
Without that, we continue to use our limited minds to try and understand something far beyond our little brains.
Most of us hardly even know what (or Who) love is. We get it mixed up with human emotions and human expectations.
A heart knowledge and revelation can only come from God.
And I believe that happens most often when we spend time with Him—in His Word, meditating on the scriptures that tell us about the God kind of love.
But it can also occur in other ways and settings—often in nature or when we show unconditional love to someone.
When we’ve entered in to that circle of love..we “feel” it. We sense that “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
We need to experience that Love—not just read about it or hear someone else talk about their experience.
It needs to become personal.
Our inner restlessness can only be pacified by the revelation of His eternal friendship and love for us. ~ Margaret Bottoms
A God-breathed prayer that describes His extravagant, unfathomable love for us can be found in Ephesians, Chapter 3. Instead of just silently reading it, pray it out loud and personalize it for yourself and for others. There is such power in speaking His Word! It’s teeming with His Spirit—His LIFE and LOVE!
I have found that to get all the juicy impartation from His Word we need to chew on it over and over again.
When we speak it, linger on certain words, ponder the depths, there comes a time when the full impact hits the target of your heart. It will find its home there.
It might be after many times of contemplation when the words aren’t just words anymore but you get that revelation—the inner knowing that you know that you know. And you can’t even explain it. You just know! And we all need to “know” how much God loves us. This portion of scripture is a good place to chew/meditate/ponder/contemplate…Love.
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Ephesians 3:16-19
I think we should hang out with this scripture a little longer…
Let’s look at it in The Amplified Version which expands it beautifully and ends with a WOW! :
May He grant you out of the riches of His glory, to be strengthened and spiritually energized with power through His Spirit in your inner self, [indwelling your innermost being and personality], so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through your faith. And may you, having been [deeply] rooted and [securely] grounded in love, be fully capable of comprehending with all the saints (God’s people) the width and length and height and depth of His love [fully experiencing that amazing, endless love]; and [that you may come] to know [practically, through personal experience] the love of Christ which far surpasses [mere] knowledge [without experience], that you may be filled up [throughout your being] to all the fullness of God [so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself]. Ephesians 3:16-19
“…completely filled and flooded with God Himself.” (obviously the WOW ending!!!)
And because this portion of scripture is so incredibly rich and tasty, lets take another juicy bite of it again from The Message Bible:
My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19
I almost want to read that one Shakespearian style—standing straight with one arm raised as I boldly and loudly declare it to all who are near. Haha. It’s something to get excited about !! We can certainly feel Paul’s passion—how he longed for everyone to truly experience the love of Christ!
Reading about the life of Jesus shows us love in action.
Just like the disciples and the other people who lived in those times of “God-in-the-flesh walking this earth,” we will be sometimes be perplexed at how Love looks and responds—often in the opposite way of what we think that it should.
One of those examples is Jesus’ delayed response when his friend, Lazarus, was gravely ill. (John 11:1-44)
Another is the story of The Prodigal Son.
Over all these years of my hearing sermons and reading books about love, one day not so very long ago, I heard a teaching about the love of God that I felt was straight from the heart of God. It was about the Prodigal Son.
This was one of the first times since my “serial killer revelation” (Love So Amazing) that I had a revelatory description of God’s love—His Father-heart.
And, of course it was a revelation about His heart and love. Because it is about the parable that Jesus taught us about God as our Father.
So this is how God wanted us to understand His love. He was the one teaching about it!
{ WOW! }
I’d read this story in the Bible so many times.
And I had heard it preached about probably just as many.
But this particular teaching was the most powerful I had ever heard.
I would like to share it with you because I think the Holy Spirit will impart a revelation to you about God’s love for us—for YOU.
It is well worth 45 minutes of your time. Just 45 minutes to get a revelation of God’s love?
Yea. Worth it!
(Note: When I recommend a book or teaching, it doesn’t mean I agree across the board with everything this person may teach or believe, simply because I can’t possibly know everything they believe or teach. What I do know is that no one is perfect or has perfect knowledge on everything—and that we can still learn wonderful things from imperfect people).
He Loves Us Andy Stanley: (December 10, 2010 at First Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA–Charles Stanley’s church)
I LOVE THIS TEACHING !!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
End:
God loves us with a love we will never fully comprehend while living on this earth, but it’s worth pursuing.
I have one desire now—to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it. ~ Elisabeth Eliot, “Through Gates of Splendor”
I believe we will have ever unfolding revelations of all the facets of Love—of HIM—as we press in to know Him more intimately.
And THAT is His desire. To be known.
Let His Love wash over you…
This is real love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 1 John 4:10
HEALING MUSIC:
How He Loves ~ David Crowder (originally by John Mark McMillan)
He is jealous for me,
Love’s like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.
And, oh, how He loves us, oh,
Oh, how He loves us,
How He loves us all.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves.
And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes.
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way…
That He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves.
may have to skip an ad…
Wider than the ocean
Deeper than the sea
Stronger than the strongest wind
That there could ever be
Sweeter than a love song
Tender as can be
Is my Father’s love for me
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:
Tell Them I Love Them ~ Joyce Meyer
Invisible ~ Jennifer Rothschild
The Perfect Love: Intensely Personal, Overflowing, Never Ending… ~ Ruth Myers
A Love Worth Giving: Living in the Overflow of God’s Love ~ Max Lucado
God Loves You ~ David Jeremiah